Google is a driving force in all of our lives. The information it houses influences many of our decisions, both personally and as a business. Did you know that there are nearly 6 billion searches done on Google every day? To expand the way Google connects its users to the businesses they need, they introduced Google’s Business Messages.

Customers expect to get information quickly on Google and these newer chat features help put that information into their hands. As a business, being ready to answers these questions is paramount to financial success and customer satisfaction. It’s an integral part of conversational advertising and one that your business should keep an eye on to stay ahead.

Research shows that 75% of customers prefer to engage with a business or brand over private messaging instead of other traditional channels, like phone calls. In fact, Twillo recently cited that 89% of consumers want to message brands. Messaging is here to stay. Here are all the details you need to know.

Google’s Business Messages (GBM) helps connect businesses with customers where they are, giving them up-to-date information quickly at any time and anywhere. When someone is searching for a business or a location on Google, a chat button will be accessible from Google Search and Google Maps. It will be in the same line as the directions and call icons.

Google’s Business Messages Chat Button

• Updated hours during peak or down seasons

• Estimated wait times

• Questions about how to use product or services features

• Stock and shipping questions

• Safety procedures and requirements

• Assistance setting appointments or directions

• Customer service feedback or help

• Share contact and lead gen information for further communication

It’s helpful for customers to have access to a representative, artificial intelligence chatbot, or other means of conversational chat with a brand. Time is saved by asking questions and getting answers over chat, especially when people would rather not get stuck in a phone tree or long phone wait times. Rather than having to call for a simple question, a chatbot could have answered that for your customer with ease.

Customers can use chat across their whole life-cycle with a brand for discovery, consideration, purchase process, customer service support, repeat purchases, and advocacy.

Google's Click-to-Message Ads for Lead Gen & Customer Acquisition

Conversational advertising is an accessible way to warm up prospective customers and help convert them from a lead to a sale. When running your Search Engine Marketing (SEM) through Google Adwords, you can run it with an accessible Click-to-Message button. This call to action (CTA) is compelling to users because it helps deliver information and gives your customers a way to act on them quickly.

When prospective customers click on the chat button, they are funneled into a 1:1 conversation in Google’s Business Message, allowing the brand an opportunity to show their value right away. This is the ultimate first impression because it will be personal, helpful, and quick for your customer.

Choosing a welcome message gets the conversation started, with prompts available for the customer to click to get additional information. Rich assistive features help better support and engage customers, with interactive elements. The Chatbot is set up to prompt further questions to process the lead and provide valuable information and insight, all while you are working in your business, or even sleeping.

Our client, the Republic of Singapore Navy, uses these features to share valuable information about Navy recruitment automatically with prospects. See the video below for how seamlessly information is sent and gathered using our chatbot, as an extension to their ads. The customer prompts, assisted by the AiChat chatbot, are intuitive and help the conversation flow with ease.

If you don’t respond to messages quickly enough in Google’s Business Messages, the feature can be disabled. Google wants to have a positive experience for Googlers, so being respectful of customer’s time and addressing their private messages promptly is important. Having a chatbot enabled mitigates those concerns.

Forrester states that brands with effective communications across multiple channels and communication types are 3.4x more likely to increase their review versus the previous year. How effectively are you currently communicating?

Through Click-to-Message ads with a chatbot integration from AiChat, you are not only bringing in customers to your brand, but you are also sending them to a space that has a higher conversion rate. Optimizing your website for conversions is timely and expensive. It’s vital in marketing to have an effective website, but a chat ad can accomplish the goal faster. Some experts even say that chatbots have increased their sales by 67% on average.

If increased conversions, streamlined processes, and automation sound like the next step in your business, AiChat can help. Take a moment to learn how we measure our Conversational Advertising effectiveness.Conversational messaging offers customer marketing and acquisition at scale, for a cost-effective price. To begin automating this valuable lifecycle marketing strategy, discover our AI-powered Conversational Marketing platform by requesting a demo today.